Oribe and Christophe Robin-Help for Your At Home Blowdry and Haircolour

Oribe is the newest addition to my post-wash routine, specifically, Oribe Featherbalm Weightless Styler. It smoothes, hydrates and offers a bit of hold to my at-home blowdry. Oribe is known for an array of effective and covetable hair products that include shampoo, conditioner, styling products, hair tools and lately, colour cosmetics. Oribe Canales, the namesake founder of the brand, along with his two counterparts and industry stalwarts, Daniel Caner and Tev Finger, are the masters behind this brand that’s a mainstay at fashion weeks and on sets.

As much as I love having my hair blow dried at the salon, most of the time I do it myself at home. Admittedly, with my hair texture, it’s quite a task. It’s been about five years since I last did a relaxer. Once I stopped doing relaxer, I attempted to go completely natural but quickly realised that that was not for me at all. After a long chat with my hairstylist, she suggested a natural keratin treatment which would smooth my hair and make it much more manageable. And so, my naturally curly hair is indeed much more manageable with the natural keratin treatment, but I still dread washing it. As a result, I needed a product that would make my at-home blow dry easier to do, give the blow dry some lasting power, while offering a professional looking finish.

To use, I apply the Oribe Featherbalm Weightless Styler after I’ve dabbed all the excess water from my hair with a cotton t-shirt and sectioned my hair into four. With the styler in my hair, blow-drying each section is worlds easier to do. For my head size (yes, I can still hear my younger sister calling me “big-head”), hair texture, and length, I use a full teaspoon and a half of product. The styler is especially good for fine to medium, porous, colour-treated and keratin treated hair, which describes my hair fully. In addition, the styler offers UV protection, a factor that is so important for hair and still widely overlooked. Using this, my at-home blow-dry lasts about six days with the strands remaining straight although my roots become a little kinky by the fourth day.

The texture of Oribe Featherbalm Weightless Styler is creamy and light and as with all Oribe products, it has a beautiful scent that was created by one of the biggest fragrance houses in the industry. Plus, the styler can also be used on dry hair for hydration and control. The bottle has 3.4 ounces of product, but the real drawback may be the price. Yet, comparing the cost of a salon blowout to the cost of this product which can be used at home numerous times over, it’s a good investment. Oribe creates formulas that harness ‘skin care technologies’ to develop hair care products that are high on performance and are a pleasure to use. Plus, nasties such as ammonia and silicones are left out.

The one time you get to be a Master Colourist

I’ve learned that no matter what they say on the box or what friends tell each other, colour is best left to the professionals. However, there is an exception for what you can do between visits to your colourist. That exception is in the form of Christophe Robin Shade Variation Care. Christophe Robin has cultivated a superb reputation centred on his mastery of colour. Starting from the age of fifteen, the French-born Robin began his career as an apprentice and then went on to work on some of the biggest names in the worlds of film and fashion. As an aside, one of those film names is the legendary Catherine Deneuve who was perfect in the film Belle de Jour. I am obsessed with Deneuve’s wardrobe in the film, (done by Yves Saint Laurent) and hope that one day I can see even a few pieces in a museum somewhere. Christophe Robin is not old enough to have worked on the film Belle de Jour, but he has since become Deneuve’s colourist of choice. His expertise remains sought-after and his line of products allow us amateurs to bring home some of the tools of his trade.

I’m in my forties now but I’ve been going grey since my twenties. Therefore I’m in a constant race to cover the grey, especially since it likes to congregate right on my hairline. As it’s not viable for me to go to the salon every week, it’s a never-ending race to beat the greys. I urgently needed to find a way to touch up my colour effectively, without buying boxes of hair colour or root touch-up brushes. After an extensive search, I came across Christophe Robin Shade Variation Care, which is a hair mask that infuses hair with colour, deeply hydrates the hair and helps to make strands less porous.

Christophe Robin Shade Variation Care comes in five shades and the idea is to choose the one nearest to your existing colour. The shades are Baby Blonde, Golden Blonde, Chic Copper, Warm Chestnut and Ash Brown. I use Warm Chestnut which is closest to my hair colour at the moment. The mask can be left on for five minutes or up to thirty minutes for more intense colour and hydration. The colour washes out in about three to five shampoos and can be used weekly or more depending on your hairs’ needs. In addition, it unifies pigments in the hair as hair colour tends to oxidise over time. So this product really is quite innovative and offers two actions in one jar.

Unlike conventional hair colour, the scent is neither strong nor industrial. The formula is infused with hydrating agents such as almond butter and buriti oil. Buriti oil serves a multitude of purposes which includes strengthening and protecting the hair and can also be used in hot-oil treatments. I also notice that the Christophe Robin Shade Variation Care helps to refine the texture of my hair by keeping it smooth and by increasing its softness and manageability. This is the niftiest product I’ve found so far that offers this level of colour care. It is second to none and really a much better alternative to stockpiling boxes of hair colour. It does a solid job of covering my greys when left on for thirty minutes, enlivens and enhances my colour by making my hair shiny until the next salon visit and overall, keeps my hair looking healthy.